Australiathe smallest continent and one of the largest countries on Earth, lying between the Pacific and Indian oceans in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia’s capital is Canberra, located in the southeast between the larger and more important economic and cultural centres of Sydney and Melbourne.

The Australian mainland extends from west to east for nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 km) and from Cape York Peninsula in the northeast to Wilsons Promontory in the southeast for nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km). To the south, Australian jurisdiction extends a further 310 miles (500 km) to the southern extremity of the island of Tasmania, and in the north it extends to the southern shores of Papua New Guinea. Australia is separated from Indonesia to the northwest by the Timor and Arafura seas, from Papua New Guinea to the northeast by the Coral Sea and the Torres Strait, from the Coral Sea Islands Territory by the Great Barrier Reef, from New Zealand to the southeast by the Tasman Sea, and from Antarctica in the far south by the Indian Ocean.

Australia has been called “the Oldest Continent,” “the Last of Lands,” and “the Last Frontier.” These descriptions typify the world’s fascination with Australia, but they are somewhat unsatisfactory. In simple physical terms the age of much of the continent is certainly impressive—most of the rocks providing the foundation of Australian landforms were formed during Precambrian and Paleozoic time (some 3.8 4 billion to 250 million years ago)—but the ages of the cores of all the continents are approximately the same. On the other hand, whereas the landscape history of extensive areas in Europe and North America has been profoundly influenced by events and processes that occurred since late in the last Ice Age—roughly the past 25,000 years—in Australia scientists use a more extensive timescale that takes into account the great antiquity of the continent’s landscape.

Australia is the last of lands only in the sense that it was the last continent, apart from Antarctica, to be explored by Europeans. At least 60,000 years before European explorers sailed into the South Pacific, the first Aboriginal explorers had arrived from Asia, and by 20,000 years ago they had spread throughout the mainland and its chief island outlier, Tasmania. When Captain Arthur Phillip of the British Royal Navy landed with the First Fleet at Botany Bay in 1788, there may have been between 250,000 and 500,000 Aboriginals, though some estimates are much higher. Largely nomadic hunters and gatherers, the Aboriginals had already transformed the primeval landscape, principally by the use of fire, and, contrary to common European perceptions, they had established robust, semipermanent settlements in well-favoured localities.

The American-style concept of a national “frontier” moving outward along a line of settlement is also inappropriate. There was, rather, a series of comparatively independent expansions from the margins of the various colonies, which were not joined in an independent federated union until 1901. Frontier metaphors were long employed to suggest the existence of yet another extension of Europe and especially of an outpost of Anglo-Celtic culture in the distant “antipodes.”

The most striking characteristics of the vast country are its global isolation, its low relief, and the aridity of much of its surface. If, like the English novelist D.H. Lawrence, visitors from the Northern Hemisphere are at first overwhelmed by “the vast, uninhabited land and by the grey charred bush…so phantom-like, so ghostly, with its tall, pale trees and many dead trees, like corpses,” they should remember that to Australians the bush—that sparsely populated Inland or Outback beyond the Great Dividing Range of mountains running along the Pacific coast and separating it from the cities in the east—is familiar and evokes nostalgia. It still retains some of the mystical quality it had for the first explorers searching for inland seas and great rivers, and it remains a symbol of Australia’s strength and independence; the Outback poem by A.B. (“Banjo”) Paterson, Waltzing Matilda, is the unofficial national anthem of Australia known the world over.

Australia’s isolation from other continents explains much of the singularity of its plant and animal life. Its unique flora and fauna include hundreds of kinds of eucalyptus trees and the only egg-laying mammals on Earth, the platypus and echidna. Other plants and animals associated with Australia are various acacias (Acacia pycnantha [golden wattle] is the national flower) and dingoes, kangaroos, koalas, and kookaburras. The Great Barrier Reef, off the east coast of Queensland, is the greatest mass of coral in the world and one of the world’s foremost tourist attractions. The country’s low relief results from the long and extensive erosive action of the forces of wind, rain, and the heat of the sun during the great periods of geologic time when the continental mass was elevated well above sea level.

Isolation is also a pronounced characteristic of much of the social landscape beyond the large coastal cities. But an equally significant feature of modern Australian society is the representation of a broad spectrum of cultures drawn from many lands, a development stemming from immigration that is transforming the strong Anglo-Celtic orientation of Australian culture. Assimilation, of course, is seldom a quick and easy process, and minority rights, multiculturalism, and race-related issues have played a large part in contemporary Australian politics. In the late 1990s these issues sparked a conservative backlash.

Unlike Britain, Australia has a federal form of government, with a central government and six constituent states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania). Each state has its own government, which exercises a limited degree of sovereignty. There are also two internal territories: Northern Territory, established as a self-governing territory in 1978, and the Australian Capital Territory (including the city of Canberra), which attained self-governing status in 1988. Major issues in resource development and environmental management have ignited controversies over the protection of states’ rights and the federal government’s gradual accumulation of power. The federal authorities also govern the external territories of Norfolk Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, Ashmore and Cartier islands, the Coral Sea Islands, and Heard and McDonald islands and claim the Australian Antarctic Territory, an area larger than Australia itself. Papua New Guinea, formerly an Australian external territory, gained its independence in 1975.

Historically part of the British Empire and now a member of the Commonwealth, Australia is a relatively prosperous independent country. Australians are in many respects fortunate in that they do not share their continent—which is only a little smaller than the United States—with any other country. Extremely remote from their traditional allies and trading partners—it is some 12,000 miles (19,000 km) from Australia to Great Britain via the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal and about 7,000 miles (11,000 km) across the Pacific Ocean to the west coast of the United States—Australians have become more interested in the proximity of huge potential markets in Asia and in the highly competitive industrialized economies of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Australia, the continent and the country, may have been quite isolated at the beginning of the 20th century, but it entered the 21st century a culturally diverse land brimming with confidence, an attitude encouraged by the worldwide fascination with the land “Down Under” and demonstrated when Sydney hosted the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.

Land

Australia is both the flattest continent and, except for Antarctica, the driest. Seen from the air, its vast plains, sometimes the colour of dried blood, more often tawny like a lion’s skin, may seem to be one huge desert. One can fly the roughly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) to Sydney from Darwin in the north or to Sydney from Perth in the west without seeing a town or anything but the most scattered and minute signs of human habitation for vast stretches. A good deal of the central depression and western plateau is indeed desert. Yet appearances can be deceptive. The red and black soil plains of Queensland and New South Wales have long supported the world’s greatest wool industry, and some of the most arid and forbidding areas of Australia conceal great mineral wealth.

Moreover, the coastal rim is, almost everywhere, exempted from the prevailing flatness and aridity. In particular the east coast, where European settlement began and where the majority of Australians now live, is topographically quite diverse and is comparatively well watered and fertile.

Inland from the coast runs a chain of highlands, known as the Great Dividing Range, from Cape York in northern Queensland to the southern seaboard of Tasmania. From the coast this range, which may be anything from 20 miles to 200 miles (30 to 300 km) distant, often appears as a bold range of mountains, though few of its peaks exceed 5,000 feet (1,500 metres). In fact, it is more like the escarpment of a giant plateau, formed of gently rolling hills, which slopes imperceptibly down to the western plains. There are similar, though smaller, stretches of hilly, well-watered land all around the rim of the continent except on the south coast where the Nullarbor Plain stretches to the sea, but everywhere precipitation diminishes rapidly as one penetrates farther from the coast.

In this huge continent there are wide variations in landforms and climate. The thickly wooded ranges of the Great Divide have little in common with the treeless, sun-baked plains of the Inland. There is a vast difference between the red rocks and monumental hills of central Australia and the tropical rainforests and sugar plantations of northern Queensland. To many visitors, Australia may not seem a pretty country, but it has a unique and haunting beauty that exerts a powerful fascination on those who get to know it.

The Australian Heritage Commission Act of 1975 established a federal agency to develop interest in a National Estate of listed places. Such places would be selected mainly on the basis of aesthetic, historical, scientific, or social significance. The process was not intended to guarantee any area or site against development, but the growing register was, nevertheless, made to serve that purpose on occasion. The UNESCO list of World Heritage sites carries more political and legal weight, and areas so classified have been protected by the federal governments in the face of furious opposition from their state partners. More than a dozen Australian landmarks, representing every state and territory, have been added to the list, including the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park, Shark Bay, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (which contains the great red mass of Uluru/Ayers Rock, a sacred site of the Aboriginals), rainforest reserves in central-eastern Australia, the Tasmanian Wilderness, and fossil mammal sites at Riversleigh and Naracoorte. Territorial disputes have arisen over proposals for the Great Barrier Reef and natural rainforest enclaves in Queensland and Tasmania.

Relief and drainage

Overall characteristics

Australia is a land of vast plains. Only 6 percent of the island continent is above 2,000 feet (600 metres) in elevation. Its highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, rises to only 7,310 feet (2,228 metres). This situation stems in part from the long periods of geologic time during which Australia has been subject to weathering and erosion and in part from Australia’s position at the edge of a zone of significant and geologically recent earth movement.

Patterns of faulting and folding in large measure control the distribution and attitude of rocks and thus play a significant part in determining the shape of the land surface. But the nature and intensity of the processes at work at and near the land surface also give rise to characteristic assemblages of forms. Australia is an arid continent; fully one-third of its area is occupied by desert, another third is steppe or semidesert, and only in the north, east, southeast, and southwest is precipitation adequate to support vegetation that significantly protects the land surface from weathering.

Permanently flowing rivers are found only in the eastern and southwestern regions and in Tasmania. The major exception is the Murray River, a stream that rises in the Mount Kosciuszko area in the Eastern Uplands and is fed by melting snows. As a result, it acquires a volume sufficient to survive the passage across the arid and semiarid plains that bear its name and to reach the Southern Ocean southeast of Adelaide. (In Australia, the southern portions of the Pacific and Indian oceans surrounding Antarctica are called the Southern Ocean; this body of water is also known as the Antarctic Ocean.) All other rivers in Australia are seasonal or intermittent in their flow, and those of the arid interior are episodic.

Many areas—notably the Nullarbor Plain, which is underlain by limestone, and the sand ridge deserts—are without surface drainage, but there are underground streams. A map of Australia can be misleading; though many “lakes” are depicted in the interior, the fact is that many of them are now salt lakes that contain no water for years on end.

The Western Plateau

The Precambrian western core area, known geologically as a shield or craton, is subdivided by long, straight (or only slightly bowed) fractures called lineaments. These fractures, most obvious in the north and west, delineate prominent rectangular or rhomboidal blocks, some of which have been raised to form uplands; others have been depressed to form lowlands or topographic basins. The lineaments display strong northwest-southeast and northeast-southwest trends in the northern, northwestern, and southeastern parts of the shield, but east-west alignments are prominent in the centre, and major structural lines are more nearly longitudinal in the west and southwest. In all areas, however, trends other than those that are locally dominant can be discerned.

Within such structurally defined areas as the Kimberleys, the Mount Isa Highlands, and the Pilbara, the nature of the land surface varies according to the type and disposition of the rock outcrops. In the Kimberleys and the Mueller Range there are extensive outcrops of flat-lying massive sandstone that have been dissected to give rise to striking isolated rock features known variously as plateaus, mesas, and buttes. Under these circumstances, local joints and bedding planes in the rocks, combined with the permeable nature of the bedrock, control the local landforms. Similar plateau forms dominate the Pilbara and Arnhem Land, though in the former region horizontally bedded or only gently warped massive ironstone formations, together with massive sandstones, give rise to prominent bluffs bordering the plateau assemblages; and in the latter karst landforms (greatly eroded) are developed where limestone occurs at the surface. At the margins of the Kimberleys (in the Fitzroy region and in the Durack Range) and in the southern part of the Pilbara, in the Ophthalmia Range, dipping rock strata have been differentially eroded to form ridges and valleys. Such features are also extensively and well developed in the uplands of central Australia (the MacDonnell, James, and Krichauff ranges), in the Isa Highlands, and in the Stirling Range of the southwest. In all of these areas it is the sandstones and quartzites that underlie the upstanding ridges, the intervening valleys being eroded in siltstones or shales; and in all these areas the pattern in plan of ridge and valley reflects the pattern of folding in the underlying rocks.

In the far southwest, the Darling Range forms an upfaulted block underlain mainly by granite but capped by laterite, a reddish, iron-rich product of weathering rock. The Gawler block, in the southeast, is complex. There are crystalline and sandstone uplands in the east, sandstone plateaus in the northeast, and, in the centre and north, the rounded Gawler Ranges built of Precambrian volcanic rocks (those older than 540 million years). Much of Eyre Peninsula is occupied by a rolling plain traversed by fixed sand dunes, but in the northwest numerous low isolated granite rocks of spectacular appearance, called inselbergs, stand above the plain. These epitomize the isolated ranges and hills widely developed in the northwest of South Australia, in the Musgrave, Everard, Birksgate, Mann, and Tomkinson ranges.

The lowlands between these raised blocks also display varied topography. The so-called Barkly Tableland is in reality a high plain of remarkable flatness, partly eroded in Cambrian sedimentary rocks (those about 490 to 540 million years old) and partly underlain by swamp deposits of Neogene and Paleogene age (i.e., about 2.6 to 65 million years old). The Nullarbor Plain, a karst area, is approximately coincident with the Eucla Basin. Its surface is so flat that in one section the Trans-Australian Railway runs absolutely straight for some 300 miles (500 km) as it passes over the region. A vast area of the southwest of Western Australia is occupied by an extensive high plain traversed by elongate ribbons encrusted with salt, the desiccated and disrupted remnants of former river courses. The Gibson Desert consists in large part of a laterite-capped plain, but huge areas of the plains of central and northern Australia are occupied by active sand dunes, and large areas of southern South Australia and Western Australia are covered by fields of fixed dunes.

Actively developing and moving sand ridges occupy the Canning Basin, the Great Victoria Desert, the Amadeus depression, and large areas of the Arunta-Sturt Complex. The dune fields extend to the east into the Great Artesian Basin, where the dunes constitute the well-known Simpson Desert. These dune deserts reflect the prevailing aridity of most of Australia, and the dune trend displays a huge swirl around the centre of the continent. Yet, even in these most arid areas, rain falls from time to time, and the rivers run occasionally. Because of the scarcity of vegetation and the common development of impermeable rock layers of various types, runoff in the arid lands tends to be rapid and achieves dramatic and significant results. Hillslopes are scoured and washed bare of weathered debris; streams erode gullies and transport large volumes of sediment from the uplands to the plains; broad, braided river channels are developed; and extensive alluvial plains are formed. It is the alluvium, carried to the lowlands by rivers and deposited on the plains, that is, in large measure, the source of the sand out of which the desert dunes are molded by the wind.

In the far southwest of the shield, and especially in the northern areas, precipitation is sufficient to support a considerable vegetation and is regular enough for streams to flow seasonally. Here the work of rivers in shaping the land surface is more obvious and widespread; the landscape consists essentially of valleys and intervening divides, the precise form of each depending on local structure. But in such areas the rate of landscape change is more rapid than in the arid zones.

Many of the landforms of the shield are inherited from the past, when different climatic conditions obtained. Remnants of laterite are widespread in many parts of Australia: the Darling Range, the far southwest, the Isa Highlands, and Mueller Range, near Darwin, and the southern Eyre Peninsula. The evidence indicates that during the Paleogene and Neogene periods these areas had been reduced to low relief, and humid tropical climates prevailed, for laterite is at present forming only under such conditions in such areas as Southeast Asia and the Congo River basin. The disrupted former drainage system of southwest Western Australia has already been referred to, and remnants of similar old stream networks occur in the Amadeus depression, on the Nullarbor Plain, and in the Great Victoria Desert. A large swamp formerly occupied the south of the Barkly Tableland; and Lake Woods, near Newcastle Waters, is now dry, with a bed of some 70 square miles (180 square km) in extent, but shorelines indicate that the lake formerly occupied some 1,100 square miles (2,850 square km). Fossil remains also suggest wetter climates in the past in many parts of Australia and subsequent deterioration toward aridity. But in the south the occurrence of dunes now fixed by vegetation shows that the climate there has recently become moister.

Finally, in several parts of the shield remnants of eroded surfaces, planed off and covered with hard, silicified crusts of weathered rock, cut across local bedrock and are either preserved high in the relief or buried beneath later sedimentary deposits. They attest to changes in the disposition of the land surface (either base-level changes or regional warping or faulting) and also indicate that, in the past, surfaces of low relief similar to present ones were widely developed. Reference has already been made to the distribution of the laterite surface. At the eastern margin of the shield there are remnants of a still older surface, of middle or late Mesozoic age (i.e., formed about 175 to 65 million years ago), which has been warped by subsequent earth movements and now disappears beneath the sediments of the Great Artesian and similar basins. Other evidence of the existence of this surface has been found in northwestern Queensland, central Australia, and South Australia.

On the southeastern extremity of the shield, the Flinders–Mount Lofty ranges occupy the site of the Adelaide downwarp in the Earth’s surface. These sediments were folded and faulted, principally in the early Paleozoic (about 540 million years ago), though recurrently since. The Flinders Ranges are a much-eroded fold mountain belt characterized by ridge and valley forms in which sandstone ridges and bluffs are dominant. The Willochra Plain occupies an elongate intermontane basin excavated from a major upwarped structure and achieved through the erosion of some 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) of sediments. There are remnants of old land surfaces of low relief, and, in the north, extremely rugged relief developed on a much-shattered granite outcrop.

To the south, the Mount Lofty Range is a faulted and much dissected and complex horst, or ancient uplifted structural block. Bounded on both east and west by meridional or gently arcuate fault scarps, which developed initially in the Early Paleozoic but which have suffered recurrent movements since (and which indeed are still active), the ranges are surmounted in many areas by the remnants of a lateritic plain. In many other areas, such a hard capping of rock, if ever present, has been eliminated by stream erosion. Sandstones again form prominent ridges and residuals (isolated relief features), such as Mount Lofty itself; small granite outcrops give rise to boulder-strewn surfaces; and exposures of gneiss form slablike blocks known as tombstones, monk stones, or penitent rocks.

Between the Mount Lofty and the Flinders ranges is a region of broad simple folds in which the sandstone ridges run for the most part north-south and in which the broad open valleys were in some instances occupied by lakes during the Paleogene and Neogene periods. To the northeast, similar upland areas of low relief, but with domes of crystalline rock standing above the general level, dominate the Olary Spur.

The Interior Lowlands

The Interior Lowlands are dominated by three major basins, the Carpentaria Basin, the Eyre Basin, and the Murray Basin. The Carpentaria and Eyre basins are separated by such minute residual relief elements as Mount Brown and Mount Fort Bowen in northwestern Queensland. The Wilcannia threshold divides the Eyre and Murray basins, and the latter is separated from the Otway Basin and the Southern Ocean by the Padthaway Ridge. The Eyre and Murray basins are entirely terrestrial, but the Carpentaria is partly inundated by the sea.

The Carpentaria plains, occupying the basin of the same name, form a narrow lowland corridor between the Isa Highlands and the Einasleigh uplands (part of the Eastern Uplands). They are drained by the Leichhardt, Flinders, and Gilbert rivers and in the south take the form of broadly rolling plains underlain by heavy gray lime-enriched (pedocalic) soils. In the north, however, there are extensive flat depositional plains, some of them related to swamps from the Pleistocene Epoch (i.e., about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago), some associated with the present floodplains of the braided river systems. Standing above the plains, for example around Normanton, are considerable plateau and mesa remnants of the Paleogene and Neogene laterite surface.

Similar rolling plains with laterite residuals standing above them occur in the Eyre Basin, particularly around the headwaters of the Diamantina, near Kynuna. But to the south, toward the more arid interior, the plains become flatter and are protected by a veneer of stones—the well-known stony desert with its mantle of gibber (hammada, serir, and desert armour). In many parts of southwestern Queensland, northeastern South Australia, and northwestern New South Wales, there are plateau and related relief remnants similar to those found in other parts of the lowlands, although these are capped and protected not by laterite but by silcrete, another hard rock residue. This region is folded in places, and the subsequent dissection by erosive forces has brought about disintegration of the silcrete, which is about 20 million years old and which formerly extended over vast areas of central Australia. This process provided much stony debris for the gibber plains so characteristic of much of central Australia and particularly of the Lake Eyre depression.

The catchment of Lake Eyre extends over some 500,000 square miles (1,295,000 square km) of central and northern Australia. It occupies the lowest point of the Australian continent (51 feet [15.5 metres] below sea level), and many large river systems drain into it. These rivers drain the driest part of the continent. But no desert is rainless, and floodwaters entirely cover the bed of Lake Eyre about twice each century, the waters deriving not only from central Australia but also from the higher-rainfall areas drained by the headwaters of the Georgina, Diamantina, Thomson, Barcoo, and similar rivers. It is now clear that, during the late Pleistocene, the precipitation of central Australia was heavier than it is now. The interior drainage basin has received vast quantities of sediment and salt by these rivers, past and present. This has provided ample source material for the Simpson Desert dunes, and many of the normally dry lake beds, including all the large ones, are encrusted with salt. Most of the largest salinas, or salt pans (Eyre, Frome, Torrens, Gregory, and Blanche), are, at least in part, of structural origin, having been formed by downfaulted blocks. Torrens and Gregory are surfaced mainly by gypsum, but the remainder carry a crust of sodium chloride, common salt. Around the major salinas there are extensive alluvial plains.

Under the prevailing arid conditions, fine dust is winnowed from the surface sediments and can be carried high into the air in dust storms. Some is carried long distances, even reaching New Zealand from time to time. The sand of the alluvium is molded into dune ridges.

Sand dunes also occupy large areas of the Murray River basin. They are, by contrast, fixed (or “fossil”) dunes, which developed at some time in the recent past and have since been stabilized by higher precipitation conditions. The eastern part of the basin, near the foothills of the Eastern Uplands, shows evidence of these former higher precipitation amounts in the numerous abandoned river channels of the Riverina. But the western Murray plains are a stony as well as a climatic desert. The plains are underlain by limestones of Miocene age (those about 23 to 5.3 million years old) and, in many areas, by calcrete, a calcareous soil accumulation. Instances of water-dissolved sinkholes and enclosed depressions can be found, and there is a lack of surface drainage characteristic of this type of topography. Only the Murray River, which originates outside the area in a different environment, crosses the basin, flowing in a narrow trench in its lower reaches.

In the east of this region there are extensive alluvial plains associated with major tributaries of the Murray. One feature of interest is the diversion of the Murray, near Echuca, by a rising structural block bounded by fault zones and known as the Cadell Fault Block.

The Eastern Uplands

The Eastern Uplands are a complex series of high ridges, high plains, plateaus, and basins that extend from Cape York Peninsula in the north to Bass Strait in the south, with a southerly extension into Tasmania and one extending westward into western Victoria. The uplands are the eroded remnants of an ancient mountain range recently rejuvenated by block faulting. They occupy the site of the Tasman downwarp belt, the sediments of which were folded and faulted in late Paleozoic times. Granite batholiths were intruded into this region, and during the Cenozoic Era (the past 65 million years) lavas appeared extensively in areas as far apart as northern Queensland and Tasmania. Characteristic features associated with this process were lava fields, with stony rises, soil-filled depressions, and lava caves. Extinct cones and craters survive in southeastern Queensland, in the Monaro district of New South Wales, and in western Victoria.

In considerable measure the landforms reflect these various geologic events. Uplifted structural blocks, many of them trending north to south, are common in some areas, while straight river courses reflect the control exercised by fault zones. Ridge and valley forms, as found in the Grampians of Victoria, reflect the differential erosion of broken and folded rock strata. Massive domes or clusters of boulders are common on the exposed granitic batholiths. The lava plains and plateaus display stony rises, shallow alluvial depressions, and volcanic vents and plugs of various types and ages.

Other features reflect the erosional history of the region. Wide areas of the upland had been reduced to a uniform low relief by the time of the later Mesozoic Era (about 100 million years ago) and many remnants of this ancient surface, exhumed by erosive action from beneath a later Cretaceous cover (i.e., up to about 65 to 145 million years oldago), survive in the landscape, notably in northern Queensland. The Cenozoic leaching of rocks by weathering in humid climates—which forms iron-rich residuals (laterization)—also affected the uplands, from northern Queensland to Tasmania.

Lastly, during the Pleistocene, small glaciers developed in the Mount Kosciuszko area of New South Wales and the central plateau of Tasmania. Small, ice-scoured hollows and small moraines (ridges of glacial debris) attest to these events, while over rather wider areas frost-shattered rocks that subsequently caused soils to flow down-slope (solifluction) have helped shape the surface. No snow normally survives through summer in either of these areas now, but in winter the snowfields of the Mount Kosciuszko area alone are more extensive than those of all Switzerland, if far less heavily supplied.

The Great Barrier Reef is related in important respects to the Eastern Uplands. Lying off the Queensland coast, this great system of coral reefs and atolls owes its origin to a combination of continental drift (into warmer waters), rifting, sea-level change, and subsidence.

The human impact

In the context of such extraordinary environmental time frames, neither the Aboriginals nor the European settlers can be described as long-term residents, yet in their brief time they have already modified the landscape considerably and in most ways deleteriously. The Europeans in particular have been responsible for initially minor, but later significant and widespread, changes, notably considerable soil erosion. Clearing vegetation for agricultural purposes, overgrazing, introducing exotic plants and animals, making tracks and roads, even clearing stones from paddocks—all have rendered the land surface more susceptible to soil erosion. Humans have set in train their own great cycle of erosion, similar to that which beset many parts of western Europe in the 18th century and which has assailed many parts of the American West since the late 19th century.

Soils

In general, the continental pattern of soils is closely related to climatic factors. Mineral or skeletal soils exist over much of arid Australia that contain virtually no organic content and have developed little depth; they may consist merely of a rough mantle of weathered rock. Gypsum is present in many of the desert loams and arid red earths. The soils of the semiarid regions (where annual precipitation is from 8 to 15 inches [203 to 380 mm]) are also alkaline, with gypsum or lime a common feature. The organic content of the soils is again low in the solonized (salt-enriched) brown soils and the gray and brown soils of heavy texture that are common in these areas.

In both the arid and semiarid regions gilgai—patterns of swells and depressions caused by the alternate swelling and contraction following wetting and drying of clay soils—have developed. They are especially well represented in areas of seasonal rainfall. In areas with 15 to 25 inches (380 to 635 mm) of annual precipitation, black earths, brown soils, and red-brown earths are the most common soils. In the wetter areas the leaching out of minerals is a prominent feature of the soils. Podzols—sandy, with much humus at the surface and acid throughout—are the characteristic soil types. In the alpine regions humus soils—surface peats over a mineral—are noteworthy.

Superimposed on these broad, climatically determined, soil patterns are local variations caused by topography, groundwater conditions, and parent materials. For example, red soils of one kind (krasnozems) are developed on the basalt outcrops so common in eastern Australia, and those of different composition (terra rossas and rendzinas) on calcareous bedrock. In addition, laterite and silcrete originated in remote geologic times, when conditions were markedly different from those of today. Laterite is represented in every state, including Tasmania, though it is forming nowhere in Australia at the present time, while silicified material is restricted to arid Australia and parts of subhumid Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland. The term is usually applied to surface or near-surface deposits cemented by silica and is often associated with the formation of mesas and other prominent landforms. Most Australian silcretes are thought to have originated in the Neogene Period.

Climate

Australia is the arid continent. Over two-thirds of its landmass, precipitation (largely as rainfall) per annum averages less than 20 inches (500 mm), and over one-third of it is less than 10 inches (250 mm). Little more than one-tenth of the continent receives more than 40 inches (1,000 mm) per year. As has been noted, in winter the snowfields of Tasmania and the Mount Kosciuszko area can be extensive, but on the whole Australia is an extremely hot country, in consequence of which evaporation losses are high and the effectiveness of the rainfall received is reduced. In addition, the severity of climate, the predominance of the outdoors in the minds and lives of many, and the national importance of agricultural and pastoral pursuits all make Australians perhaps more climate-conscious than most. In no country of comparable development do climate and weather loom so large in the lives and conversation of the people.

The principal features of Australia’s climate stem from its position, shape, and size. Australia is mainly a compact tropical and near-tropical continent. No major arms or embayments of the sea penetrate far into the landmass. The only extensive uplands occur near the east coast, and even they are not, by world standards, very high.

In summer (December–February), when the sun is directly overhead in northern Australia, temperatures are extremely high. The sea exerts little moderating influence, and the uplands are not sufficiently extensive or high to have more than local effects. Temperatures commonly soar above the 100 °F (38 °C) mark in the interior, but because there rarely is any cloud cover, radiation loss is considerable at night, and daily temperature ranges are wide. High temperatures dominate the Australian summers in all but Tasmania. Heat waves are common, and, though the highest amounts of solar radiation are received in northern South Australia, the highest temperatures and longest heat waves are recorded in the northwest of Western Australia. For example, Marble Bar has recorded a maximum temperature of 100 °F or more on 162 consecutive days. Temperatures in winter remain moderate except in the uplands of Tasmania and southeastern Australia, where snow is common. Night frosts are common in winter throughout southern Australia and in the interior.

Because of its relatively low latitudinal position, Australia comes under the influence of the southeast trade winds in the north and the westerlies in the south. Northern Australia is affected by a northerly monsoon, partly because of the latitude and the seasonal migration of planetary wind zones and partly because of the summer heating of the continental interior that draws in surface winds. The monsoon brings summer (December–February) rains to the northern coastal area that penetrate inland for variable distances. These summer rains are all the more important because most of northern Australia is in the sheltered rain shadow of the Eastern Uplands, which block the rain-bearing southeast trades in winter. The trades, forced to rise by the uplands, bring heavy rains to the Pacific coasts of Queensland and northern New South Wales. These areas are also affected by tropical cyclones and receive the heaviest rains of any part of Australia. Within this coastal fringe, the northern Queensland area around Tully, south of Cairns, is the wettest, with an annual average of nearly 160 inches (4,050 mm).

Southern Australia receives winter rains from depressions associated with the west-wind zone. Again, there are local topographic controls, with uplands receiving higher amounts than the adjacent plains. Parts of the southern Mount Lofty Range, in South Australia, average more than 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rainfall per year, but Adelaide, to the west, averages only about 20 inches (500 mm), while the Murray plains, in the rain shadows of the range, receive 15 inches (380 mm) or less rainfall annually.

In the great mass of the interior of Australia, annual rainfall averages less than 20 inches (500 mm), and over vast areas the total is less than 10 inches (250 mm); the Lake Eyre region averages less than half that amount. Rainfall in these areas is unreliable and capricious, with long droughts broken by damaging rains and floods. Over Australia as a whole, rainfall is indeed extremely variable. Only in the far north, around Darwin, in the southwest of Western Australia, in southern South Australia and Victoria, in Tasmania, and in eastern New South Wales is the recorded annual precipitation fairly consistent, in any given year totaling no more than 10 percent above or below the long-term average in specific years.

Much of Australia’s marked climatic variability has been ascribed to the changeability in differential air pressures over the central Pacific and the Indonesian archipelago, primarily caused by contrasts in sea and ocean temperatures. The resulting large-scale swing in air pressure is known as the Southern Oscillation. Monitoring the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is now considered essential to seasonal weather forecasting. The SOI is strongly negative when weak Pacific winds bring less moisture than usual to Australia. Prolonged negative phases are related to El Niño episodes in the South Pacific, and most of Australia’s major droughts have been related to these episodes. Prolonged positive SOI phases (during La Niña) normally bring above-average rainfall and floods to eastern and northern Australia. In each case, however, the correlations are not exact.

Plant and animal life

Overall characteristics

Some two centuries ago Australia was in a nearly primal condition, unmodified by the practices of large-scale conventional agriculture. The continent’s prehistory is so recent that a scattering of old eucalypts can be found still standing, bearing the great scars of canoes or shields cut from the bark by the Aboriginal peoples.

As nomadic hunters and gatherers without herds or crops, Aboriginals burned much of Australia’s native vegetation, both deliberately and haphazardly. Fire, more particularly its frequency, had a profound influence on much of Australia’s native vegetation, the surviving remnants of which have become difficult to manage; some have changed in composition because the fire frequency has decreased, others because the frequency has increased. The Australian botanist Helene Martin has presented palynological evidence (from the study of pollen and spores) showing how the trends of change in certain types of arid and coastal vegetation, over several thousand years of prehistory, were apparently deflected by the fires of Aboriginals.

Since Europeans arrived on the continent, cataclysmic changes have been wrought in its biota. Settlers have stripped the native vegetation from most potentially arable and some nonarable regions, substituting mainly exotic (nonnative) herbaceous crops and pastures. In the process they have effected the extinction of many native species and, through sheer decimation and reduction of habitat, have pushed many more to the brink of extinction. The vast central and northern regions too arid for the cultivation of crops were stocked with millions of sheep and cattle, converting them to rangelands. Many exotic animals (such as camels) and plants were introduced incidentally, some running wild as pests, without effective control measures. As a result, much of the inland has been overgrazed, and its original fauna has become impoverished.

Public pressure began increasing dramatically in the late 20th century for improved wildlife and natural landscape conservation in Australia; this in turn provoked strong opposing reactions from long-standing business interests that have exploited the country’s resources. The result has been an increasing acrimonious debate. Existing reserves have protected some native biota and landscape—though scarcely enough to check the ongoing loss of diversity.

Legislation requiring preparatory environmental impact statements became standard for most types of development during the early 1970s. Conservationist organizations interested in protecting fauna and flora are well developed in Australia, and environmental protection is also served by related National Trust bodies whose main concern has been with the “built” environment of towns, cities, and historic rural landscapes. The strongest national conservation body is the Australian Conservation Foundation, which acts as a lobbyist and coordinates the work of smaller groups.

Plant life

Australian federal and state government agencies and some universities maintain facilities for the scientific collection, storage, and study of Australian plants. Updated knowledge about these plants comes mainly from such institutions and reaches the public through published handbooks, called floras, listing and illustrating the species. The number of general popular books dealing with the ornamental, horticultural, medicinal, culinary, and other uses of plants increased sharply following the publication of a major new flora, the multivolume series Flora of Australia (1981).

Australia’s phanerogamian (seed plant) flora of approximately 20,000 species is thought to have arisen in ancient times from two distinct intakes of stock. Both stocks had previously been involved in a wider theatre, and each intake was followed by a period when the species adapted and diversified within the continent. The great advances in geophysics toward understanding continental drift have made it possible to take the paleontological and related botanical evidence and reconstruct the physical environment and time-sequence.

Australia’s initial intake of flora originated—as was the case with present-day South America, Africa, India, Madagascar, New Caledonia, New Zealand, and Antarctica—during the period when it was part of Gondwana. Hence, much Gondwanan flora is still shared among these now-separated lands, both at present and in the fossil record, including, for example, the southern beech (also called the Antarctic, or myrtle, beech), the conifer families Podocarpaceae and Araucariaceae, and many angiosperm families (e.g., Myrtaceae, Proteaceae, and Stylidiaceae).

Australia also shares many groups of plants with the Malesian region (the Malay Archipelago) to the north. This is considered to be the result of a second, two-way exchange much later in geologic history, in the Miocene Epoch, when continental drift eventually brought Australia into close proximity with the Malesian region. Thus, typically Australian taxa such as the genus Leptospermum (of the family Myrtaceae) extend northward; Baeckea extends to China, Melaleuca to India, and Eucalyptus to the Philippines. Of the family Epacridaceae, Leucopogon extends to Malaysia and Thailand, and Trochocarpa to Borneo and Celebes (Sulawesi). Conversely, more than 200 genera of plants best known from the Malesian region or northward are represented in Australia (mainly northern Australia), each by a single species not confined to Australia. These are comparatively recent arrivals from the north.

The characteristic part of Australia’s plant life that is little shared with other lands, together with those specialized characteristics that apparently originated on the continent long ago, form what has been designated as an Australian (or autochthonous) element. It includes many of the plants that are distinctive to typical Australian vegetation scenery and shows a marked tendency to sclerophylly (formation of hard leaves). Speculation has linked sclerophylly with low soil nutrient levels. Australia ranks lowest among the continents for soil fertility. Many genera include various species, each adapted to different environments across the entire range of the continent’s habitats.

The Australian element includes derivatives of Gondwanan stock channeled specially to Australia, at the family level (for example, Epacridaceae, Myoporaceae, Goodeniaceae, and Stackhousiaceae), together with typically Australian developments within nonendemic families—for example, subfamily Leptospermoideae of Myrtaceae, the genera Banksia and Hakea of Proteaceae, the grass trees and blackboys (family Xanthorrhoeaceae, separated from Liliaceae), and the kangaroo paws (family Haemodoraceae).

Most obvious to the visitor is Eucalyptus, which is represented by more than 400 species, ranging in size from diminutive mallees, smaller than a person, to forest giants matching in bulk and height the world’s largest plants. Their habitat is similarly varied, ranging from rainforest to snowfield to hot desert fringe. Members of the genus Acacia have undergone similar adaptive diversification; the 700 species range from mulga and myall—the dominant trees of vast arid areas—to small leafless blades at ground level, the grass wattles.

Vegetation

The word vegetation, as opposed to plant life, implies the structure and communal relations of the landscape’s plant cover, whether it be forest, grassland, or marsh. There is no standard, or worldwide, classification system (such as exists for describing flora) for this aspect of the environment. Initial attempts to apply European and American classification concepts to Australia were not particularly satisfactory because of the peculiarities of the continent’s vegetation and environment. For example, climatic control of local vegetation zones was often found insufficient to explain vegetation changes; on the contrary, soil patterns and geologic history quite override climatic control in many localities. Similarly, structural descriptive schemes useful for Northern Hemisphere coniferous and deciduous vegetation proved inappropriate when confronted by the great variety of evergreen vegetation—notably mallees and shrubs—found in Australia. The mapping of Australian vegetation is based largely on factual descriptive features, and by this means comprehensive and detailed accounts and maps have been produced.

Australian plant life is distributed in three main zones—the Tropical, Temperate, and Eremian—a pattern that reflects overall climatic conditions. The Tropical Zone, which arcs east and west across the northern margin of the continent and extends halfway down the eastern seaboard, has a mainly dry monsoonal climate, with some wet regions. The Temperate Zone, with a cool-to-warm (temperate-to-subtropical) climate and precipitation mostly in winter, is arced across the southern margin, embracing Tasmania and extending up the eastern seaboard to overlap slightly with the Tropical Zone. The Eremian Zone covers the whole of central Australia through to the west-central coast; its climate is arid.

The major structural units constituting this geographic distribution are rainforest, sclerophyll forest (dominated by hard-leaved plants such as eucalypts), and woodland, scrub, savanna, and grassland forms, each with a range of subforms. The bulk of the Tropical Zone comprises mixed deciduous woodland and sclerophyllous low-tree savanna, with areas of tussock grassland, coastal mangrove complexes, and tropical rainforest containing much exotic vegetation—particularly in the northeastern parts of Cape York Peninsula and in Queensland. A strong Malesian influence occurs throughout the entire zone. The rainforests—characterized by large trees with stem buttresses and by multiple vegetation layers with interlaced canopies of lianas and epiphytes growing in the trees—fit the popular concept of “jungle.”

The Temperate Zone is characterized by dry and wet sclerophyllous forests, temperate mixed woodlands, savanna woodlands, mallees, and scrubs, with areas of alpine vegetational complexes, temperate rainforest, and sclerophyllous heath. A much higher proportion of the vegetation cover is typically and recognizably “Australian.” Within this zone the southwestern corner of Western Australia is outstanding, both for the high proportion of Australian plants and for the richness of the plant life, while the vegetation of Tasmania is notable for its forests of southern beech and for its botanical links with New Zealand and South America. In marked contrast to the tropical rainforests, the predominant trees throughout most of the Temperate Zone communities are either Eucalyptus or Acacia. Much of the Temperate Zone vegetation has been cleared for agricultural purposes, leaving only the vegetation communities of infertile or inaccessible localities.

The vegetation of the Eremian Zone ranges from barely vegetated desert and hills through a variety of semiarid shrub savannas, shrub steppes, semiarid tussock grasslands, and sclerophyllous hummock grasslands. Many shrubs have adapted themselves similarly to the arid conditions, so that in their vegetative state many representatives of different families look alike. Acacia, Eremophila, and Casuarina are examples of genera that tend to displace Eucalyptus as the dominant tree or shrub. Much of this vegetation is badly degraded.

Animal life

The distribution of climates, topography, and soils that has produced the zones and ecological variation of Australian vegetation has also been reflected in the distribution of animal life. Australia probably has between 200,000 and 300,000 species, about 100,000 of which have been described. There are some 250 species of native mammals, 550 species of land and aquatic birds, 680 species of reptiles, 190 species of frogs, and more than 2,000 species of marine and freshwater fish. The remainder are invertebrates, including insects.

In the varied environments of the Tropical Zone, species confined to the rainforests of the mountainous northeast include the tree kangaroos (genus Dendrolagus) and the gorgeous bird-wing butterflies (Ornithoptera). Others favour more open habitats such as savannas and grasslands. Among this group are the agile wallaby (Macropus agilis) and Amitermes meridionalis, a termite that orients its mounds in a north-south direction by sensing the Earth’s magnetic field.

The animals of the Eremian Zone are characterized by their ability to survive under extremely arid conditions and irregular rainfall. Examples include the marsupial mole (Notoryctes typhlops), a burrower in sand, and the water-holding frog of the genus Cyclorana. After rainy spells Cyclorana burrows deep in the soil, forming a chamber in which it lies in a cocoonlike sac filled with water formed from a special outer layer of its skin. The budgerigar (Melopsittacus) is adapted to irregular rainfall by being nomadic.

The fauna of the eucalyptus forests and other habitats of the Temperate Zone contains animals whose life cycles rely on regular winter rainfall. Many are highly adapted to the eucalyptus forests. The koala depends on the foliage of just a few species of forest eucalyptus. Lyrebirds and gray kangaroos are forest dwellers. Gray kangaroos also range into semiarid shrublands and heaths. The only Australian alpine animals occur in the high mountains of the Temperate Zone. They include the mountain pygmy possum (genus Burramys) and the alpine grasshopper (Kosciuscola).

Some species occur in all zones. These include the galah (Cacatua roseicapilla; a species of cockatoo) and the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen).

Extinction of native species is a matter of much concern. Some 20 mammal, 20 bird, and 70 flowering plant species are presumed to have become extinct during the period of European settlement. Some 50 terrestrial mammals and more than 1,000 flowering plants are officially listed as both endangered or vulnerable; that description is also applied to about 30 amphibians, 50 reptiles, and 50 birds. Estimates of the numbers of introduced species include 1,500 to 2,000 flowering plants, 30 freshwater and marine fish, and about 70 land animals and birds. There has also been a great reduction of range of most species inhabiting temperate or semiarid lands, except for those that have benefited from the extension of pastures and watering points. The latter species include the large kangaroos and the Australian magpie.

The high degree to which many species depend on a relatively narrow range of vegetation types means that animals of some zones have suffered more from human activity than others. Small and medium-size terrestrial mammals and ground-nesting birds of temperate and semiarid grasslands and shrublands have been most affected by clearing for pastures and cereal crops. In addition, they have suffered most from competition with and habitat destruction by introduced animals such as rabbits, sheep, goats, and cattle and from predation by the foxes and feral cats. Few parts of Australia are free from the effects of introduced animal species. In the tropical north the cane toad (Bufo marinus) is believed to be a major predator of small native vertebrates. Even the introduced honeybee, which is widely established in the feral state, is suspected of affecting native nectar-feeding insects, mammals, and birds.

The role of the Aboriginal people in causing the extinction of fauna before European settlement has been much debated. It is clear that at the time of European settlement Aboriginal hunting and burning had major effects on animal numbers, but a balance seems to have been maintained, possibly assisted by a system of social prohibitions that protected important species under certain conditions. But the effect of the initial Aboriginal entry on the continent is not yet clear. At that time, at least 60,000 years ago, the fauna contained many species of large animals (the Australian megafauna) and was considerably different from the fauna present at the time of European settlement. Such megafaunal animals as the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon, giant wombats, the giant short-faced kangaroos (Sthenurus and Procoptodon), the so-called marsupial lion Thylacoleo, and giant flightless birds called mihirungs or Genyornis probably became extinct over a period between 27,000 and 12,000 years ago, possibly as late as 6,000 years ago.

It has been argued that Aboriginal overhunting, together with environmental changes caused by associated Aboriginal burning of the country, caused the extinction of these species. Others have suggested that climatic fluctuations at the end of the Pleistocene (some 11,700 years ago) were a more likely cause. Certainly, although there were no extensive ice sheets in Australia, the last glacial maximum (between 22,000 and 18,000 years ago) was a time of highly arid, as well as cold and windy, conditions. Deserts reached their greatest extent at that time, and there is no doubt that under such conditions the fauna (as well as humans) would have been under considerable physiological stress. No clear consensus has emerged, and, in view of the facts that there is no evidence of a sudden mass extinction and that Aboriginals seem to have occupied most of Australia for at least 20,000 years before the last megafauna disappeared, it is likely that a combination of all these factors played a part. By about 20,000 years ago, few mammals had survived that weighed more than their human predators.

Commercial hunting of only a few species of native fauna is allowed. It is confined to several species of the kangaroo family, muttonbirds (Puffinus tenuirostris), and some of the most common cockatoos and parrots; however, federal law does not permit live birds to be exported. Permits can be obtained to destroy pest species (such as kangaroos in certain circumstances). Sport shooting of game birds (ducks, quail, and snipes) and a few mammals is permitted in some states. Before controls were established, the numbers of several attractive varieties of parrots and cockatoos—as well as of crocodiles and such mammals as koalas, brushtail possums, ringtail possums, many wallaby species, and seals—reduced dramatically. Most have recovered, however. Quotas are set for the commercial taking of kangaroos each year for hides and for human and pet food. Numbers of kangaroos are constantly monitored, and there is no evidence of any reduction in the wild populations. Hundreds of thousands of muttonbirds are taken yearly for human consumption.

Fauna authorities and scientists responsible for conserving kangaroos support such commercial exploitation on scientific grounds. Many also believe that it would be in the interest of both conservation and agricultural practice to encourage husbandry of kangaroos. However, many others, both in Australia and elsewhere, are vehemently opposed to killing kangaroos for any reason. The issue has become highly political.

Australia has its share of potentially dangerous, as well as commercially useful, animals. The large saltwater crocodile (Crocodilus porosus) is known to eat humans. Of the many poisonous elapid snakes, the most dangerous to humans include taipans (Oxyuranus), smooth snakes (Parademansia), tiger snakes (Notechis), brown snakes (Pseudonaja), and death adders (Acanthophis); the latter, although smaller than the others, have large fangs, a lightning-fast strike, and highly toxic venom. About one-seventh of Australia’s snake species pose a deadly threat to humans. There are many poisonous spiders, the best-known being the funnel-web spider (Atrax) and the red-back (Latrodectus). Both of these have caused human deaths, but only a minute proportion of Australia’s spiders are dangerous. Antivenins are available for the venoms of both spiders and snakes.

Ticks and internal parasitic worms are mainly harmful to stock and domestic pets, and some blood-sucking insects are disease carriers. The larvae of the sheep blowfly Lucilia attack sheep and cause losses worth millions of dollars to the wool industry. Locusts, weevils, and insect larvae of various sorts do great damage in agriculture.

The Australian fauna (and that of New Guinea, which is part of the Australian lithospheric plate) is markedly different from that of the other adjacent land areas (Indonesia and other nearby islands). It is now known that this difference stems from Australia’s long isolation and northward drift into its present geographic position. Thus, the Australian fauna has been derived to a large degree from the lands with which Australia was in contact when it was part of Gondwana. That part of the fauna derived from Asia, which includes the only extant native placental mammals (rats, mice, bats, and the dingo—the latter probably introduced by Aboriginals), entered Australia by island-hopping or accidental drifting. As might be expected, flying animals of Asian origin (e.g., bats and birds) reached Australia before the others, and they may have done so soon after Australia separated from Antarctica. Horseshoe bats (family Hipposideridae), which are related to typical Old World forms, appear in the Australian fossil record about 20 million years before the present.

The Gondwanan component gives the Australian fauna its distinctive character. As is the case in South America, Australia has many species of marsupials, but they radiated more widely in Australia than in South America, coming to occupy virtually all mammalian adaptive niches. Thus, there are marsupial equivalents of moles, anteaters, wolves, flying possums, and antelopes. The only egg-laying mammals in the world—the platypus (genus Ornithorhynchus) and the echidna (Tachyglossus); also the New Guinea long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus)—are Gondwanan as well, but the oldest related fossil is from the Early Cretaceous of central Australia and predates the separation of India from Australia. Until recently it was assumed that placental mammals had not occurred in Australia until they emigrated southward from Asia. Nor was there evidence of distinctively Australian mammal fossils in South America. In 1991, however, the Australian paleontologists Michael Archer, Henk Godthelp, and Suzanne Hand reported finding bats of early Eocene origin (about 55 million years old) and a condylarth-like placental mammal in southeastern Queensland. In the same year, the Argentinian paleontologist Rosendo Pascual announced evidence of a 63-million-year old monotreme from Patagonia in southern Argentina. Pascual and Archer reported it to be strikingly similar to the Australian platypus (genus Obdurodon) of the Middle Miocene (about 15 million years ago).

Emus and cassowaries, mound builders (megapodes), and parrots are almost certainly of Gondwanan origin, as are the side-necked turtles (family Chelidae). Other examples of animals of Gondwanan origin may be found among reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrate groups. Some, such as earthworms belonging to the nonpheretimoid Megascolescini, occur in Australia and India but not in the other continents derived from Gondwana, implying that these animals occurred in a sector of Gondwana from which both Australia and India were derived.

The most ancient part of the Australian fauna predates even the formation of Gondwana. For example, the Queensland lungfish (Neoceratodus) has its closest relatives among the ancient fossil fauna of Europe, North America, and Asia. These elements are thought to have evolved between the Cambrian and the Devonian periods. Queensland lungfish are less closely related to the lungfish of Africa and South America (Lepidosirenidae) than to the extinct forms from Asia, Europe, and North America. Some insects, arachnids, onycophorans, land mollusks, and earthworms also are thought to have Pangaean origins. There are rich Australian fossil faunas from these ages, including the oldest known vertebrates, Arandaspis, a jawless fish from the Late Ordovician and superbly preserved armoured fishes and lungfishes from the Devonian.